Tribalwar

Microsoft Unveils Win 7 Pricing, Upgrade Program

Submitted by: KnightMare @ 10:25 AM | Thursday, June 25, 2009 | (url: http://www.pcmag....)

Starting Friday, consumers who purchase a PC with Windows Vista Home Premium, Business, or Ultimate at participating retailers will get a free upgrade to Windows 7 when it becomes available. The offer will run until Jan. 31, 2010.

For those waiting until the October 22 release date, a Windows 7 Home Premium upgrade will cost $119.99 and the full package will retail for $199.99.

The Windows 7 Professional upgrade will cost $199.99 and the full system will be $299.99. For Windows 7 Ultimate, the upgrade version will retail for $219.99 and the full version will set you back $319.99.

Microsoft said these prices are about 10 percent less than what they charged for Vista the Home Premium upgrade version of which retailed for $129.99 at launch.

Vista Service Pack 2 released

Submitted by: KnightMare @ 02:58 PM | Tuesday, May 26, 2009 | (url: http://www.theinq...)

Although the Service Pack hasn't made it to Windows Update yet, you can now grab the official downloads from Microsoft's Download Center. The installer includes Service Pack 2 for both Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008, resulting in a 348.3MB file for 32-bit version - and a 577.4MB file for 64-bit version.

Despite the massive file size, however, there's not much to get excited about. The update mainly includes all of the bits and bobs that have been released since Service Pack 1, although this doesn't include Internet Explorer 8.

Hulu Streams up 490 %

Submitted by: KnightMare @ 09:30 AM | Friday, May 15, 2009 | (url: http://www.pcmag....)

t appears that ABC made a wise choice when it decided to put its content on Hulu. Total streams on the video site increased 490 percent year-over-year, according to Thursday data from Nielsen.

Hulu recorded 373.3 million video streams in April 2009, up from 63.2 million in April 2008.

Google-owned YouTube was still at the top, with about 5.5 billion streams last month. That is an increase of 35.5 percent from last year.

Pirated Windows 7 Builds Botnet with Trojan

Submitted by: KnightMare @ 08:33 AM | Thursday, May 14, 2009 | (url: http://www.eweek....)

Security researchers at Damballa report shutting down the command and control server of a botnet built by a Trojan bundled with pirated copies of Windows 7 RC. The Trojan is believed to have infected thousands of users.

Attackers pushing pirated, malware-laced copies of Microsoft's upcoming Windows 7 operating system have been actively trying to build a botnet.

According to researchers at Damballa, attackers hid a Trojan inside of pirated copies of the operating system and began circulating them on BitTorrent sites. Damballa reported that it shut down the botnet's command and control server May 10, but by that time infection rates had risen as high as 552 users per hour.

3D Realms to Shut Down

Submitted by: KnightMare @ 07:19 PM | Wednesday, May 6, 2009 | (url: http://www.shackn...)

A very reliable source close to Duke Nukem Forever developer 3D Realms today confirmed to Shacknews that the company has been shut down.

The closure came about as a result of funding issues, our source explained, with the shut down said to affect both 3D Realms and the recently resurrected Apogee name. Employees of both entities have already been let go.

Phone calls and e-mails to various 3D Realms veterans have thus far gone unanswered, with publishing partner Take-Two likewise unavailable for comment.

Blu-ray Sales Up Sharply in Q1

Submitted by: KnightMare @ 09:17 PM | Friday, April 17, 2009 | (url: http://www.homeme...)

Unit sales of Blu-ray Discs in the first three months of 2009 nearly doubled, compared to the same period last year, according to Adams Media Research.

Monterey, Calif.-based Adams said the high-definition format tallied about 9 million units through March, compared to 4.8 million units in 2008. There are about 10.5 million BD-enabled households, including about 7 million to 8 million dedicated BD players.

At least twice as many homes have a BD player, so it is very expectable that it would double or more, Adams said.

Despite Blu-rays strong start, Adams said the Blu-ray sales do not offset declines in DVD revenue.

He also said that due to the recession, the format is rolling out slower than DVD, although faster than VHS.

They're gone! After outcry, Time Warner uncaps the tubes

Submitted by: KnightMare @ 07:44 PM | Thursday, April 16, 2009 | (url: http://arstechnic...)

After a public outcry and the attention of several members of Congress, Time Warner Cable has stopped its trial of Internet data caps, but not before making "metered billing" a tough sell for all other American ISPs.

Time Warner Cable said repeatedly that it wanted to hear from the public as it expanded its Internet data caps, and the public has roared back its response: metered billing should exist in some non-obscene ratio to cost and to competitors' pricing. In response, TWC will shelve the trials "while the customer education process continues."

Google Losing up to $1.65M a Day on YouTube

Submitted by: KnightMare @ 12:51 PM | Tuesday, April 14, 2009 | (url: http://www.intern...)

Google is spending more than $2 million a day on YouTube -- and it is nowhere near seeing a return on that investment. Indeed, it may be losing up to $1.65 million daily on the video site.

According to financial firm Credit Suisse and Internet measurement provider comScore Inc. , YouTube Inc. is on track to serve 75 billion video streams to 375 million unique visitors in 2009.

That's the good news. The bad? To support those visitors, Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) will spend more than $2 million dollars daily -- to be exact, up to $2,064,054 a day, or $753 million annualized, according to Internet Evolution calculations of YouTube's costs derived from a range of sources, including Bear Stearns & Co. Inc. , comScore, Credit Suisse, and Google itself.

In Australia, banned links could cost $11,000 a day

Submitted by: KnightMare @ 09:54 AM | Tuesday, March 17, 2009 | (url: http://www.smh.co...)

The Australian communications regulator says it will fine people who hyperlink to sites on its blacklist, which has been further expanded to include several pages on the anonymous whistleblower site Wikileaks.

Wikileaks was added to the blacklist for publishing a leaked document containing Denmark's list of banned websites.

The move by the Australian Communications and Media Authority comes after it threatened the host of online broadband discussion forum Whirlpool last week with a $11,000-a-day fine over a link published in its forum to another page blacklisted by ACMA - an anti-abortion website.

"The first rule of censorship is that you cannot talk about censorship," Wikileaks said on its website in response to the ACMA ban.

Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL search up; Google down

Submitted by: KnightMare @ 09:31 AM | Thursday, February 19, 2009 | (url: http://news.cnet....)

Yahoo, Microsoft, and AOL each carved out a little more U.S. search market share in January, but Google still had the biggest piece of the pie, according to a report Wednesday by ComScore.

Yahoo Web sites accounted for 21 percent of the market (up half a percent) compared to the month before, while Microsoft grabbed an 8.5 percent slice (up 0.2 percent), and AOL nabbed 3.9 percent of the market (a 0.1 percent increase).

Google, while still holding the largest slice of the market by far, accounted for 63 percent of the search industry in January, down half a percent.

One interesting observation from Silicon Alley Insider is Yahoo's consecutive five-month run in posting modest monthly gains in U.S. search market share.

Microsoft to open retail stores

Submitted by: KnightMare @ 10:42 AM | Friday, February 13, 2009 | (url: http://news.cnet....)

After years of brushing off the notion, Microsoft said on Thursday that it will open up its own line of retail stores.

Without detailing the plans, Microsoft said it has hired David Porter, a 25-year Wal-Mart veteran, to lead the effort. Sources say that Porter's mission will be to develop the company's retail plans and that the effort is likely to start small with just a few locations.

Although Microsoft has generally relied on others to sell its wares, it's not Microsoft's first foray into retail.

Back in the dot-com days, Microsoft had one retail outlet, at the San Francisco Metreon mall. However, it never expanded the effort and closed that location in November 2001.

Google Explains "Harmful Site" Glitch

Submitted by: KnightMare @ 11:54 AM | Saturday, January 31, 2009 | (url: http://googleblog...)

We work with a non-profit called StopBadware.org to get our list of URLs. StopBadware carefully researches each consumer complaint to decide fairly whether that URL belongs on the list. Since each case needs to be individually researched, this list is maintained by humans, not algorithms.

We periodically receive updates to that list and received one such update to release on the site this morning. Unfortunately (and here's the human error), the URL of '/' was mistakenly checked in as a value to the file and '/' expands to all URLs. Fortunately, our on-call site reliability team found the problem quickly and reverted the file.

Apple: Jobs to Take Medical Leave of Absence

Submitted by: KnightMare @ 05:09 PM | Wednesday, January 14, 2009 | (url: http://blogs.wsj....)

Apple CEO Steve Jobs today sent the following email to all Apple employees:

Team,

I am sure all of you saw my letter last week sharing something very personal
with the Apple community. Unfortunately, the curiosity over my personal health
continues to be a distraction not only for me and my family, but everyone else
at Apple as well. In addition, during the past week I have learned that my
health-related issues are more complex than I originally thought.

In order to take myself out of the limelight and focus on my health, and to
allow everyone at Apple to focus on delivering extraordinary products, I have
decided to take a medical leave of absence until the end of June.

RIAA axes file-sharing lawsuits

Submitted by: Stilgar @ 12:26 PM | Wednesday, December 24, 2008 | (url: http://scitech.bl...)

Those of you who regularly share music over the Internet, legally or illegally, have by now heard the news that the Recording Industry Association of America is shelving the practice of filing lawsuits against most individuals it suspects are pirating copyrighted music online.

According to The Wall Street Journal, the RIAA will send a letter to an ISP when it thinks one of its customers is illegally sharing copyrighted music. The ISP will either forward the letter to the alleged offender or ask him to stop.

If the file-sharer ignores the warning, he risks having his Internet service terminated or his bandwidth squeezed to the point where it takes watching the entire “Lord of the Rings� trilogy before all 10 tracks of Coldplay’s “Viva la Vida� are illegally in his possession. Ouch.

Australia To Block BitTorrent

Submitted by: KnightMare @ 10:24 AM | Monday, December 22, 2008 | (url: http://www.news.c...)

"Censorship Minister Stephen Conroy announced today that the Australian Internet Filters will be extended to block peer-to-peer traffic, saying, 'Technology that filters peer-to-peer and BitTorrent traffic does exist and it is anticipated that the effectiveness of this will be tested in the live pilot trial.' This dashes hopes that Conroy's Labor party had realised filtering could be politically costly at the next election and were about to back down.